Travel, no matter how far from home, nor
We took in the sights, soaked up the
for what length of time always gives you a
town’s energy, laughed with the kids and
new understanding of not only yourself and
headed out to the point to look at the ocean.
your surroundings, but more importantly
Squadrons of Cape Gannets, streaked into
how the two fit together. This trip was to be
the ocean at 140 km per hour, their heads
no different.
protected from the impact by airbags in
green water, tantalizingly close to the offshore blue that would have given us the underwater photo opportunity we so desperately wanted. We watched the Cape Gannets betraying the action below with
their skull, the bombardment constant and
their sometimes-suicidal dives into the
Arriving in Port St John’s after two days
unrelenting. Despite the absence of visible
ocean.
on the road, and quick surf in Jeffrey’s Bay,
blue water, tomorrow would be our day; it
cannot be adequately described in words.
was clear that the action was on.
The cliffs surrounding the ancient gorge are as timeless as the idle river flowing the length of the valley floor. Green forests, white beaches and the ocean complete the picture of beauty and tranquility. Over the second speed bump and fast-forward into a kaleidoscope of blaring music, mixing colors, laughing children, jostling taxis, barking dogs and people and litter everywhere. Welcome to town! I could not decide whether I was looking at a decaying backwater or the future of Africa. What was undeniable was that one could spend a week just in town taking award-winning photographs.
Co n t en ts
Five days, and over forty hours of total sea time later and the sardines in
Ten meters below, in the dirty green water, everything we had come to see was happening, just not for our eyes, nor our
cathedrals of blue light remained a vision.
cameras. We went over the horizon and
We had given it our all, but the schools
dived in purple blue water just to see if
of fish had stubbornly stayed in the dirty
anything was there.
inshore water. We never deviated far from our quest; we had seen the pictures and we wanted to get ours, but almost imperceptibly more and more time was
We were distracted from our quest by thousands of Humpback Whales passing
spent on the other things happening around
on their annual migration to the Equator
the boat. The change in our expectations
to calve. Breaching and tailing, they were
was gradual but it was happening.
a constant presence. We were seeing the
We watched as the isolated clans of dolphins started to merge into the beginnings of a super pod. We followed them for hours as they hunted in the
most amazing sights and were getting pictures but our expectations, the dream that had driven us to get here, was stubborn and it drove us on. Pa ge 2 2 | w w w. a fr i c a n di ve r. c om